2 firms join in FPGA design tool effort

Electronic News, July 31, 1995 by Jim DeTar

MENLO PARK, CALIF.--A pair of new firms under the same management have been formed here to create a set of design tools for field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and design PCMCIA form factor communications products.

Viatek Inc. plans to develop design tools that allow users to reconfigure installed chips for new applications in the field as easily as they now upgrade software, while a companion firm--enVia Inc.--is chartered to develop PC cards and mobile phones for voice and datacom that adapt to different transmission methods and protocols.

Viatek chairman Mark Cummings, who is also president of enVia, said in a broad-ranging interview with Electronic News that the relationship between the two companies is fluid at this point and may change.

"EnVia is working on the applications and Viatek is working on tools. There is stock ownership and contracts between the two of them and we're considering rolling them into a single company." He noted that he thinks there is enough difference between the companies that they would retain separate names and marketing focus. "Some of our partners and potential investors thought it would be easier if they were under one umbrella," he explained.

"There's really two pieces to this puzzle. One is that trying to build applications without tools is difficult; trying to build a business around tools without successful applications is difficult. That's why we're doing both at the same time. However, those two businesses look at different communities of customers. That's why we have two different company names although we have the same company logo and the same sense of being part of a larger family of organizations."

One connection between Viatek and enVia is that enVia is said to be developing these communications cards using the ability of FPGAs to be dynamically reconfigured even after they've been installed and are in use in finished products. However, neither Viatek nor enVia plans to make FPGA devices of their own. "We plan to use existing parts for our products," Mr. Cummings said.

Although the capital structure of the companies was not made public, they are apparently funded at least in part by their two primary equity partners: Celestica, a Toronto-based, wholly-owned subsidiary of IBM that is said to be one of the largest contract manufacturers in North America; and Leonard de Vinci (LdV) University in Paris, a new institution cooperatively funded by the French government and industry and charged with developing engineers and managers who are familiar with new technologies.

A major focus of LdV is programmable logic technology. It has absorbed much of the technical staff of the recently closed Digital Equipment Corp. Paris Research Laboratory, which focused on the field of reconfigurable technology.

Mr. Cummings has previously held management positions with a variety of firms including SRI International, TransGate and RCA Globecom. In terms of other management and corporate structure, John Watson has been named president of Viatek and Milind Bhise, formerly with University Systems and Seelink Technology, heads finance and operations for both companies. At this time the firms have no vice presidents and are either partnering with other companies or contracting for other services.

Viatek's first products are expected to come to market in 1996. Viatek's engineers have been chartered with creating EDA software and hardware that will allow engineers to write chips as easily as they now write a new application in BASIC.

"Conventional tools today start with circuits, then schematics, then VHDL, then synthesis and testing. They are very hardware-oriented. The relationship between circuits and the situation you are trying to satisfy is not obvious. We are taking a different approach. We start by converting the requirements into an algorithmic expression and that's what is input into the tool. No one else is doing that in the FPGA world."

EnVia's mass-market "credit-card" sized communications products, meanwhile, will adhere to the PC Card (formerly PCMCIA, Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) standards and will be formally announced, the company said, in 3Q95. EnVia will use what it terms a "new form of corporate organization" to produce its products, partnering with corporations and other organizations that will provide raw materials, manufacturing, distribution and capital financing while enVia focuses on market analysis, product conception, product design and development, coordination, marketing and after-market support.

In addition to its two primary partners, Viatek/enVia have other partners that are providing analog front-end for the prototype hardware, as well as software, special pricing on equipment, distribution, business and legal structure. For example, the legal structure is provided by Venture Law Group, headed by Craig Johnson. "There are 35 attorneys in the group and they work with small companies," Mr. Cummings said. "They have made an equity investment in EnVia and Viatek and are acting as corporate secretary and providing business advice." Mr. Cummings said Venture Law Group is a relatively small stock holder.